San Bernardino May Just Save Itself -- And Then Again, Maybe Not

Regular readers know MDW tracks municipalies in a bit of fiscal trouble. It seems the mainstream media seldom provides timelines and thus the need for tracking, at least at some superficial level.

San Bernardino, California, was added to the list July 11, 2012. 

Today, an update at the LA Times:

Saying it had little choice, the San Bernardino City Council voted to cut $26 million in spending in an effort to keep the bankrupt city from dissolving and being governed by the county.

The city is already in bankruptcy proceedings and facing a $45.8-million budget shortfall. The $26 million in cuts will help the troubled city stay afloat.

The austerity plan is a required step in the federal bankruptcy process. It freezes vacancies in the Police Department even as the city deals with an increase in violent crime. The Fire Department’s overtime budget also was slashed by 35%.

And then this:

At Monday’s hearing, Councilman Chas Kelley blasted the budget-cutting plan for being shortsighted and not addressing San Bernardino’s long-term financial health, which he said depends on attracting business and expanding the middle class.

The California middle class voted to increase taxes on itself to help pay for a bullet train to nowhere just a few weeks ago. Somehow that doesn't seem to be a recipe for expanding the middle class. Perhaps expanding the struggling class. The 47% that some presidential candidates will never reach.

Cue up Connie Francis.

Oh, by the way: San Bernardino has oil, too, but California's green policies aren't helping:

“Such inattention to California’s resources may be popular in wealthy precincts of Silicon Valley, San Francisco and west Los Angeles, but the state’s green approach has helped place traditionally manufacturing-oriented communities such as Oakland, east Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Stockton in deep distress,” Kotkin writes. “Despite central California’s vast deposits of oil and gas, unemployment rates in some oil-rich areas there are over 15 and sometimes even 20 percent.”  -- Breitbart, July 16, 2012.

For folks who say North Dakota is booming because the state is "lucky" to have oil: that's only part of the story. One has to do more than build wind farms, solar farms, and bullet trains to nowhere.